“No,” Lady Elizabeth said just as he succeeded in gaining sole possession of her hand at last, and jerked her hand away from his.
“Never say you’re meaning to leave us, sir?” gasped a round-cheeked brunette in a dress the color of mud, her eyes wide on his face, as the women drew closer together to stare at him as one.
“’Iding be a fool’s game,” the mosquito said. “And Mary Bridger’s no’ a fool. I’ll not be doin’ it.”
“They’ll find us sure,” said the comely blonde.
“Will ye not take us with ye?” begged one farther down the line. Tall, thin, and pale, with sandy hair straggling loose over her shoulders and her prim-necked blue gown ripped at the shoulder, she punctuated the question with what sounded suspiciously like a sob. In fact, he discovered to his dismay, she looked on the verge of tears. She was, however, no concern of his, none of them were any concern of his, and he meant to keep it that way. Neil once again reached for Lady Elizabeth’s hand. She put it behind her back, which left him, most uncharacteristically, at a loss. He could, of course, reclaim it instantly if he chose to force the issue, but . . .
“Of course they’re coming with us.” Lady Elizabeth stood her ground, her expression mulish as she met his gaze. “I take full responsibility.”
“You take . . . ” Words failed him for a moment, probably because, in looking at her, he found himself irresistibly reminded of Old Hook Nose again. It was, he decided, something in the glint of the eyes, and the extremely decided set of the jaw. “Full responsibility?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Strong men shivered in their boots when they encountered the look he brought to bear on her. She put up her chin.
I’d kill a man who defied me so. Unfortunately, she was not a man.
“Please don’t leave us,” the thin female in blue begged, welling tears glinting in the candlelight.
“We’ll be ever so quiet, sir,” chimed in the round-cheeked one.
“And do just as ye say,” promised the blonde.
Two more, a small, plump dove of a female with smooth wings of dark brown hair and a gray dress, and a taller, plainer one with an angular face, frizzy, lighter brown ringlets, and a dress that might have once been white, clung together, nodding vigorously as their eyes beseeched him. Only the mosquito frowned, and as his gaze fell upon her she sniffed in what he was clearly meant to know was disdain.
“We are staying together,” Lady Elizabeth informed him as the women drew closer to their champion, huddling around her even as they looked at him. Her tone made it a statement of fact. Her eyes held his unflinchingly. “You may do as you choose.” She looked at the others. “Let us but get another candle, and we’ll be on our way.”
“To where?” the blonde asked, casting him a sideways glance as if she might be pondering the merits of abandoning her fellow females to cast her lot with him, which, of course, wasn’t an option.
“Never you mind.” The mosquito was fierce.
“We will continue on in the same direction in which we’re presently going in the hopes of discovering a way out,” Lady Elizabeth said. Her manner cool and steady, she had already withdrawn another candle from the drawer and was reaching for the flint and steel to light it. Neil eyed the slender back she presented to him with mounting exasperation even as the group surrounding her darted speculative glances from her to him. He got the clear impression that they were waiting to see what he would do at this blatant challenge to his authority. The answer, arrived at after a few seconds’ thought, was nothing. For one of the few times in his life, he had to acknowledge himself bested. While he was more than prepared to abandon the other women to their own devices, he wasn’t about to let Lady Elizabeth get away from him. Though she had no idea of it, the plain truth was he needed her badly.
His lips tightened.
“Fine. You may have it your own way,” he said, speaking to Lady Elizabeth, who had cast him a haughty glance over her shoulder when he began. Then his gaze swept the group. “But I tell you to your heads I’ve no idea what we may encounter, and all of us together make too easy a target. The best thing would be for us to separate. I’m warning each of you, you’ll be safer alone.” The thought of simply throwing Lady Elizabeth over his shoulder again, making off with her, and having done was tempting, but he doubted that the deed could be accomplished without a great deal of noise, on her part and the part of the other women. In fact, it wasn’t difficult to imagine them screaming the walls down, all thought of concealment forgotten. Anyway, unless he physically disabled them, which he knew already he was not going to do because they were bloody harmless females after all, there was nothing preventing them from following. The knowledge was like a bitter pill he could see no alternative but to swallow. “Devil take it, this is foolish beyond permission, but we haven’t time to debate. Stay with us if you will.”
“Ye’ll not regret it, sir.”
“We’ll be quiet as mice, you’ll see.”
“I’m ever so grateful, I am.”
“We be in your debt.”
“To my thinkin’, we’re no better off with ’im than we are without ’im.” This, from the mosquito, was followed by another of those pointed sniffs.
“A man’s protection—”
“No more bloody talking,” he ground out as their clamor grew ever louder, casting a quelling look around the group, all of whom immediately clamped their lips together and stood totally mum.
Taking the unlit candle from Lady Elizabeth and dropping it and the flint and steel in his pocket, just in case it should be needed later, he grabbed her hand and started off again. Her fingers curled willingly around his now.
Of course they did. The minx had successfully called his bluff.
“Do you know a way out?” Meant for his ears alone, her voice, he was pleased to realize, was at least a little worried.
“’Twould be no more than your just deserts if I didn’t, wouldn’t it?”
“But you do.”
“We’ll soon find out.”
She said nothing more for a moment. Then, her voice even quieter than before, she added, “That you would visit such a place as this is reprehensible, and I don’t excuse you for it, but I do thank you most sincerely for saving me. Again.”
That took him by surprise. Of course, she had no idea that the only reason he was there was because of her, that he’d come for the sole reason of effecting her rescue. He started to tell her so, then thought better of it. Really, the less she knew, the better.
“You’re welcome. Again.” His tone was dry.
“Didn’t somebody say there was to be no more bloody talkin’?” the mosquito asked acerbically.
No one said anything more. Moving carefully through the obstacles that littered the various chambers, Neil led the way as swiftly as he could manage toward the farthermost reach of the cellar, where, if things remained as they had once been, there was an iron door. That door opened onto a stairwell that led down to a cave with a small fingerlet of a cove that came right inside it, right in beneath the castle. Once used by smugglers to bring goods in from the open strait, it had been well guarded in his day. His hope was that that day was no more—and the door, stairs, and cove were still there. And, also, that there was still some kind of a boat.
Otherwise, the only alternative was to swim out. As he recalled, the water was deep and cold, which would pose no problem for him. Few females could swim, but he seemed to remember the maid saying that Lady Elizabeth swam like a fish, and hoped it was so. If it was, and swimming was their only choice, it was possible that most of her companions would have to be left behind, not that he considered that a drawback. But whatever their numbers, swimmers would have to make their way around the jetty to where the rocks permitted access to the shore. Then, soaked and freezing, they must, if they wished to leave the island, walk around to the ferry. Where, because any searcher worth his salt would have considered that the ferry must be any escapee’s goal, someone—probab
ly many heavily armed someones—would almost certainly be keeping watch.
In which case, the battle would be well and truly joined.
He and an assortment of soggy females against a force of dozens.
He’d survived worse odds, but the thought of what a fiasco such a confrontation could turn into had him vowing to avoid the ferry landing at all costs. If there was not one in the cove, there had to be a boat concealed somewhere on the island.
“Oh, sir, I think there be a light coming behind us,” one of the females whispered urgently just as he spied the door he had been seeking. Its smooth, iron-gray arch appeared at first glance as no more than a darker, stationary shadow amongst many shifting along the walls. If he had not known such a door existed and been looking for it, he would have missed it. “’Twas but a glimmer, but I saw it, I’m that sure.”
The whole group looked around as one, himself included.
He saw nothing beyond the flickering yellow circle cast by his own candle. The way behind them was black as a tar pit, just as it had been all along. As far as he could tell, there was no change.
But he heard . . . something. What, exactly, he couldn’t tell, only that it was a sound he couldn’t identify, that struck him as being out of place. His senses leaped immediately to high alert. Unless the girl was mistaken, and he didn’t think she was, whoever was back there had, upon spotting their light, immediately blown out his candle or shuttered his lantern.
Damn it to hell.
He did not dare risk doing the same, not yet. They were in the very last chamber, with nowhere to go except through the door. Hanging on like grim death to Lady Elizabeth, who still stubbornly towed the rest of the pack behind her, he took the few strides necessary to reach the door, then spent a precious brace of seconds surveying it by candlelight.
As far as he could tell, it was as he remembered.
Glancing around at Lady Elizabeth, employing a tone that even she should recognize was meant to be strictly obeyed, he whispered, “Stay right where you are and be ready to move when I tell you to move.”
Then, dropping her hand, he blew out the candle. Impenetrable darkness dropped over them like a curtain.
Over the indrawn breaths of the females, from perhaps half a cellar away, he heard a man’s muffled curse.
The chase was on, no mistake. There was a solution, of course, but it was in his best interests to cause no more commotion than that which had already occurred, and most certainly to leave no more telltale bodies behind. The object of the entire exercise was his own ultimate survival, after all.
Neil’s hands were already tightening around the bar that secured the door. The noise it made as he lifted it made him grit his teeth, although he was counting on the cover of darkness to conceal their exit even if it did not muffle all sound. If things were as he remembered, the bar on the other side of the door should be unsecured. This secret entrance was always locked, one way or another. Fortunately, tonight it was locked on the castle side.
His luck held. Even as the smallest glimmer of a light—a lantern being cautiously unshuttered?—sprang to life in the distance to the accompaniment of the gasps and frightened muttering of the huddled women, the heavy door yielded to his determined efforts with only the slightest of creaks. The light—and thus the men with it—was already on the move toward them as he caught Lady Elizabeth’s arm, propelling her toward the opening. Where they stood was still cloaked in utter darkness, but that would not last long. The probing tentacles of light would reach them well before the men did.
“Go down the stairs. Hurry,” he told her.
Chapter Thirteen
BETH’S HEART KNOCKED against her rib cage as she descended the broken-down, slippery stone steps at what felt like breakneck speed. Mary and the others crowded close behind her, although they no longer clasped hands, as each had to feel her way down the stairwell alone to keep from falling. She could hear their panicked breathing, and the shuffle of their feet. Enclosed by stone walls that were repellently slimy to the touch, the narrow passage seemed to have been chiseled out of solid rock. Having pushed them before him through a door he had somehow managed to open in the dark, her handsome housebreaker, whose appearance on the scene was proving as miraculous as it was astounding, was now bringing up the rear. She was in front, with no idea of where she was heading, other than down. Over the moldy scent of the walls, she thought perhaps she could smell the sea, and there was just enough grayish light seeping up from below to make her think—hope—that they were racing toward some sort of exit, a door or window that was open to the night.
She prayed it was so. Despite the closed and hopefully locked door that stood between them and the rest of the cellar, the sounds of pursuit were terrifyingly close. Thumps and bangs and clatters, so loud it was clear their pursuers were now in the chamber they had just vacated, echoed off the walls of the narrow chute they were escaping down.
“Where’d they go?”
“Hold that lantern high!”
“Bloody wenches have to be here somewhere.”
“They’re hiding, don’t you know?”
“Search behind those barrels. See if any of those trunks open.”
“’Ave a care. Whoever’s ’elping ’em did for Malloy.”
“Aye, well, shoot ’im and grab the bawds.”
“Could they have doubled back?”
The barely muffled voices were sharp with frustration. The accents varied from gentlemanly to broad Yorkshire, with the gentlemanly one seeming to be in charge, which to Beth’s mind indicated that the servants had now been joined by at least one of their masters. Knowing that they were mere yards away in the room at the top of the stairwell made Beth’s blood run cold. From the voices, she guessed there were at least six, and possibly more. It could only be a matter of time until one of the band spotted the door. When that happened . . .
She shivered. They needed to be well away before then.
A moment later, just before she reached the ground, Beth could at last glimpse where they were headed as she looked out through the open door at the end of the stairwell. The place where she would emerge was night-dark rather than pitch-black, thanks to glimmers of moonlight that filtered in through the mouth of what appeared to be a large cave and glinted off the mirror-smooth blackness of a narrow finger of water. As she reached the bottom of the steps and ran out onto it, toward the water, the ground beneath her feet was rocky sand—a beach. Just strides away, the small inlet lapped at the shore. The arched mouth of the cave—for it was a cave she was in, with stone rising steeply all around to form a soaring ceiling over her head—must open to the sea beyond.
“Blimey, they be comin’.” Mary rushed to join her, with the other women tumbling from the stairwell one by one to race behind her.
“They’re coming, they’re coming.” The frightened warning rose from every throat.
Pulse leaping, whirling around to face the stairwell opening, Beth listened to the rattling and scraping that filled the air and identified it as the sound of someone attempting to open the door at the top of the stairs. Clustering together now in a tight group just a couple of yards from where the tide lapped at the shore, none of them knowing where to go next because, except for the mouth of the cave, which could only be reached by water, there seemed to be no way out, the women exchanged frightened glances.
“There’s no damned boat that I can find, and the water just off the shore here drops to about twelve feet deep.” The housebreaker caught up to them. Since he came from a direction other than the stairwell, she thought he must have been searching for a boat in the dark. “Can you swim?” His eyes were on Beth, and the question was clearly directed to her. He had been moving fast, but didn’t seem even faintly breathless as he stopped in front of her.
“Yes,” Beth answered, glad her voice sounded far calmer than she felt.
“No!” the blonde cried at the same time, clutching at his arm.
Shrugging her off, the housebreaker c
aught Beth’s elbow. His large, warm hand slid beneath the silk to close around her bare skin. “That simplifies things. We must just . . . ”
“I canno’ swim either!” Mary grabbed a handful of Beth’s domino, which billowed behind her as the housebreaker pulled Beth toward the water. Grabbing hold of the domino, too, and moving with them, the others chimed in together.
“Nor I!”
“Nor I!”
“I’m sorry for it.” The housebreaker glanced around. He did not sound particularly sorrowful, Beth noticed. “If you hide, perhaps some of you will escape.”
“There’s no place to hide.”
“’Tis sitting ducks we’ll be!”
“I saw a boat in the cellar!”
“Bah, ’tis of no use to us now, is it, with them in the cellar with it?”
Beth could feel the frantic tug of their hands on the domino even as the housebreaker determinedly drew her on toward the water. She couldn’t talk, and in fact could scarcely breathe. The prospect of leaving the others behind was terrible, but the alternative was something she knew she could not survive. The pounding from the top of the stairs turned into a drawn-out, metallic screech that cut through the night. Beth’s already racing heart thumped even harder. There was no possibility of mistake: their pursuers were now attempting to force open the door.
“What be that?”
“They’re forcing the door.”
“Cor, what do we do?”
The panic in the other women’s voices flayed at her like a whip.
“The water will be cold,” the housebreaker warned in her ear. “I’ll stay beside you in case you need help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
A lightning glance at the mouth of the cave confirmed it: the distance was not that great. With the water so smooth, Beth knew that, cold or not, she could swim it with ease.
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